Some people, when they get old, don’t want to look it.
They want to stay “forever young,” and if they can’t manage that, because there is no magic elixir, not even alcohol, at least they don’t want to show “the ravages of time.”

They go to the face doctor, the skin doctor, the anti-aging look doctor.

They say, “Everything’s sagging.”

The doctor says, “We’ll give you a lift.”

So they try to lift. The breasts. The face. The eyebrows.

When the skin is loose, they tighten it.

The result is often the stretched look. The astonished look. The eyes are pulled to the side. The eyebrows are lifted to the forehead toward the receding hairline and out of place, and then are removed to be replaced by surrogates drawn on that looked like they’re drawn on. Too often the mouth becomes fish lips.

The make-up business booms.

Gravity and entropy come into play, things loosen, and a re-tightening is scheduled.

It came up in a discussion with my doctor. We both agreed I didn’t need it, and if I ever did, oh well, why bother?

I don’t care about my appearance. People tell me that’s obvious. I don’t mind looking old because I don’t look at myself.

I’m not one of those people so concerned with appearance that they try to acquire enough money for “the procedure.” This struck close to home when my Mother-in-law went to a cheaper doctor across town, came back in bandages for days, and had to live with the result. She had always wanted to be in movies, because, you know, Hollywood. Dreams die hard.

So I said to my doctor, jokingly, “Do you install a little screw at the back of the neck where the person with the lifted face can tighten themselves without needing another procedure?”

My doctor, who was not a plastic surgeon himself but knew of them, their vast amounts of money from the fees their clients were willing to fork over, doctors who lived the lifestyle of medical notoriety with the mansion and servants and the swimming pool that establish their reputation and draw the rich as patients, my doctor, I don’t know if he was joking, said, “Yes. They implant it in the neck back under the hair.”

I had seen it myself in restaurants, the new-faced “celebrity” entering, friends and acquaintances rushing over, looking at the face, fleeing in terror saying, “Sorry, I thought you were someone I used to know.”

I myself am more interested in what’s behind the face. The person, not the personality. The presence, not the absence. If the skin is only stretched over an empty skull, I do not linger.

Which brings me circuitously by circumlocution to Ricardo Montalban.

He became television iconic with his Chrysler commercials for Cordoba’s interior of “rich Corinthian leather.” That phrase, with the resonant voice, the accent, established the standard and icon of over-acting.

My memory conflates experience, anything in common with anything else, so plastic surgery with “You look mahvelous” conflates with Saturday Night Live and Billy Crystal and Fernando Lamas and the resonant intonation and accent and over-acting which gets me back to Ricardo Montalban and his “Corinthian leather,” which gets me to Montalban as one of my brushes with greatness, or near brushes with greatness, or brushes with near greatness, or…

Because we saw Ricardo Montalban in person. Live. On stage. At the Music Center, the Mark Taper Forum, theater-in-the-round, and Shirley and I were in the audience that went around the center stage where four chairs seated four actors in Don Juan in Hell.

To this day I thank Shaw for writing this excerptable chunk that can stand on its own removed from Man and Superman, the lonnnggg British answer to German torture which tested the human limits by giving us famously Wagner’s whole Ring Cycle experimentally performed in a single day, dawn to dusk and beyond, start to finish, beginning to end, to see who would survive, I mean the audience, not the gods.

But here, in town, present in person, we had without suffering, David Carradine as the Devil, Lynn Redgrave as Dona Anna, Stewart Granger as the Commander, and Ricardo Montalban as Don Juan. They all read and played their parts, and remain somewhat memorable. And we were there, I was there, close enough to go down the aisle and reach the stage.

I didn’t watch television enough to follow the twists and turns of Fantasy Island where Montalban as Mr. Roarke had his own Tattoo and the famous house we knew so well was in the L. A. County Arboretum by the little lake which earlier gave us the jungle setting for Tarzan. The house we knew as a present part of our lives, so we had yet another Montalban connection.

Montalban we knew from the screen, not just as Corinthian leather. Everyone knew him as Khan. The movie gave him more dimension than the original Star Trek episode. We could shout with the screen as Khan yelled, “Kirk!” and Kirk yelled, “Khan!”

We remember and were impressed by his vis-à-vis with Columbo where he played the cowardly bull fighter and we said, “Yes, he can act.”

Which is all background to our second closer brush with Montalban greatness.

There’s a famous store in Santa Monica that features Mexican jewelry, turquoise and silver. We were on the silver circuit and the turquoise trail, knew and bought from traders in several states. We were not neophytes.

I don’t remember the name of the iconic store in Santa Monica, or the owner proprietor’s name, big in the community, either on Arizona Avenue or maybe probably Montana Avenue. I suppose I could research it on the internet, if it still exists.

Anyway, there was announced a Grand Opening for a Special Collection, special guest Ricardo Montalban.

The store was packed. The crowd included sellers and collectors from all over, many of whom we knew as friends, many from whom we’d bought over the years, with stock and offerings even beyond what was here displayed, more Native American, of comparable quality, almost all beyond our price range.

Then the Grand Entrance of the Guest of Honor. Ricardo Montalban, his wife Georgiana (Loretta Young’s half sister) on his right, his entourage following. He brandished his cane which he needed for walking. He was wearing a long coat from his shoulders like a modern cape, and a hat of consequence on his head.

Everyone applauded.

He acknowledged us.

He gave the welcoming speech in his familiar resonant voice, praised the owner his friend of similar background, and mingled with the crowd. I think we shook his hand. I think we exchanged words.

Shirley of course looked at the jewelry.

She wanted to buy something, made a judicious choice, fine earrings and matching bracelet, crafted silver and turquoise, more than we could afford, but layaway was offered, pay monthly, we’ll keep it safe for you and when you’ve paid it off you can claim your prize and take it home.

We paid something down and signed the papers and waved good bye for now to the earrings and bracelet.

The owner, I still don’t remember his name, who personally oversaw the transaction, had a reputation in the community for high quality, but also, as we learned, the reputation, “Watch out for him. He’s known for substitution.”

This was verified when we brought our final payment and came to pick up our layaway. We opened the box. The earrings and bracelet looked thinner and lesser. Shirley said, “This doesn’t look like what I remember buying!”

The answer, “Memory can be deceiving.”

We couldn’t prove it, but concluded that he had taken our carefully selected choice and sold it for immediate cash to one of his wealthy regulars, then replaced it with thinner lesser he assumed we wouldn’t notice. He didn’t know Shirley. She noticed. But what could we do? We had no proof. He showed us the signed papers.

We thought, “We should have taken a picture that would hold up as evidence in court, if we were litigious types.”

We knew learning experience comes with a cost. You can’t always win.

The question, “Who you gonna trust?” and the answer, “Not you.”

But the bright side. We had our brush with greatness, met Ricardo Montalban in person, and he looked mahvelous.